Teddie's Problem
by sacrificecats666
Summary: While the investigation team waits for the killer's next move, Teddie develops a worrying problem. [MAJOR SPOILERS FOR A 10 YEAR OLD GAME INSIDE]


It was mid-October and the Investigation Team's leads had run dry. With Mitsuo Kubo declared a copycat killer and with no other viable suspects, they had no choice but to wait for the real culprit's next move.

Each of the members had their own ways of dealing with the dry spell: Kanji, Rise and Yukiko would continue to help out at their family's respective businesses. Yosuke had his duties at Junes to attend to, Yu had several part time jobs and Chie did martial arts or something.

And then there was Teddie.

While not originally a denizen of our world, since Rise's rescue, he had been living in Yosuke's closet. During this period of inactivity, he'd managed to develop a problem much more troubling than the investigation at hand.

Inaba was a quiet town; aside from the murders, nothing serious had transpired and crime was at an all time low. So, what was Teddie's problem? In a town like this, he wouldn't have been able to get hold of something as dangerous as drugs and even if he was of age, he couldn't buy alcohol as he didn't have any kind of ID. But Teddie's problem was much worse than illicit substances or drinking.

Teddie had gotten addicted to _vaping_.

It wasn't known how he got his hands on the paraphernalia, perhaps he had saved up enough money from working at Junes and had ordered it on the Hanamura family computer, but what was known, was that it was really fucking obnoxious. What started as a harmless toy had developed into a full-blown nicotine addiction and the rest of the Investigation Team needed to stop it.

On a Wednesday after school, the group called a meeting in the Junes food court to stage an intervention.

"Wowwee, Sensei!" Teddie was ecstatic to see his favourite person "I got a new liquid! It's _Topsicle_ flavoured, you must try it!"

"No thanks." Narukami said, both intrigued and disgusted by Teddie's fresh juice, but mostly disgusted.

"Teddie, this has to stop! If my old man finds any of this crap in my room he's gonna kill me!" Yosuke was less worried about his friend's health than what his father would do to his paycheque if he suspected him of smoking.

"It's also real freakin' annoying." Kanji was tired of having clouds of flavoured vapour blown in his face by the bear. "Also, didn't the x-rays show you ain't got anything inside you? How the hell you breathing that shit in?"

"I was actually wondering that too." Said Yukiko, completely missing the point.

"Wait, are there meat flavours? Like steak?" Chie asked Teddie, predictably.

"Come on guys, it's not _that_ bad! Besides, my manager vapes too and it's never bothered me." Rise was forgetting that vaping because you need to quit smoking and vaping because you like to make big meme clouds are two completely separate, incomparable things.

Naoto wasn't present for this meeting, she was busy at the police station. However, if she were present she'd have told Teddie to fuck off with the vaping much like everyone else.

"Look Teddie, if you're gonna keep living in my room then I don't want you vaping." Yosuke was firm in his position.

"Aww but Yosuke-" Teddie paused mid-sentence to take a fat rip from his doucheflute. "Vaping is my life now!" Teddie continued through a flavoured cloud.

"Hey! Knock that shit off, there are kids around!" Kanji was right, there were kids around but that had never stopped Teddie before.

"I can't help it, Kanjicle! If I stop, I'll die!" Because of his abnormal biology, Teddie's body had become entirely reliant on nicotine and vape juice. Modern medicine couldn't explain this and may never at all.

"Gimmie that!" Yosuke snatched the vaper from Teddie's degenerate paws.

"Youskeeeee!~" Teddie protested. But it was already too late, Yosuke had taken his favourite toy captive.

"Yosuke give it back, he'll die!" Rise was inordinately panicked.

"STEAK." Chie ejaculated, the rotten little guttersnipe she is.

Narukami, while supposedly the closest in the group to Teddie, showed no concern to the current situation. Instead, he was thinking of fusions and that nurse you can social link hoohoo baybee. Yosuke stared at the vape, entranced by its design and engineering. Something about the artefact drew him in – as if the vape itself was calling to him.

"Succ me, Yosuke." The vape said to Yosuke.

"Ok sure." Yosuke replied to the vape.

Yosuke pressed the drip tip to his lips and began to inhale the delicious juice. His lungs were filled with the vegetable glycerine based mixture and shorty thereafter were completely evacuated of it as Yosuke spat out the fattiest cloud Teddie (and for that matter the rest of the investigation team) had ever seen.

"Woah Yosuke, that's the sickest vape I ever did see!" Teddie was astounded by the large volume of vapour his friend had managed to inhale and then subsequently exhale.

"Oh! Let me try next!" Strangely, Yukiko was the next to fall victim to the dangers of vaping. Her friends would have thought she was the least likely to want to try this disgusting habit. She took the vape from Yosuke and took a sizeable puff.

"Wooah Yuki-chan!" Teddie was ecstatic that his friends were taking to vaping and sure enough each and every member of the investigation team would fall victim to the millennial craze. By the end of the afternoon they all had become sufficiently nic'd out.

Naoto had been tied down in the police station going through case files. She'd barely made it to the end of the Investigation team meeting and when she arrived she was greeted by a table of teenagers off their heads on nicotine.

This would become routine for the investigation team – meeting up at Junes and pumping themselves full of the addictive substance. E-Juice containing nicotine is actually not legal for sale in Japan so I don't even fucking know where they're getting this shit maybe Teddie is just an absolute vapelord who knows.

With no real progress made on the investigation everyone who wasn't a member of the Junes Scooby-Doo Crew had given up on the whole scenario. Adachi deadass turned himself in and Izanami actually proper fucked off. Since Namatame never got caught, Nanako never went to hospital. You'd think in this case that everything would have returned to normal in Inaba, but for some reason the fog never lifted. It seemed to grow thicker and denser by the day.

Come spring time, Yu Narukami would leave an Inaba enveloped in fog.

A fruity, Topsicle flavoured fog.


End file.
